Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

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> The situation is very different from the south-African "apartheid". Gaza is a sovereign territory with an hostile religious fanatic government that forced Egypt and Israel to maintain highly secured borders. The Israeli law does not discriminate its citizens and there are Palestinian parliament members and judges.

One of the most comprehensive sources on the Israel apartheid comparison is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analo...

> By employing both Israelis and Palestinians, companies actually contribute more to peace and equality than BDS ever will.

A bunch of human rights organizations have evidence that the Palestinians are exploited as a cheap labor that is outside of Israeli labor protections:

https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/04/13/ripe-abuse/palestinian...

It would be cool if Israeli companies adopted somethign akin to the Sullivan principles which were adopted by ethical South African companies during the apartheid era:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_principles

Then you know they are not just using Palestinian labor for cost saving reasons, but the companies are showing support and are working towards breaking down the system of inequality that is currently in place there.

Writing as an Israeli.

There is no inequality inherent in the system. The fact that Palestinian nationals (who are not Israeli citizens) are mostly employed in cheap jobs is no different from Filipinos or Chinese being employed in cheap jobs abroad. Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jews, in everything from education to employment. They even get preferential acceptance to universities (lower acceptance requirements).

Claiming there is an apartheid in Israel is simply FUD.

I live in Australia where Filipinos and Chinese work in 'Cheap jobs' paying $19 an hour, the standard minimum wage. The government busted a chain of convenience stores for under paying people on student visas who worked more than their limit of 20 hours. The students were given immunity against deportation for admitting they worked more than their limit, so they can come out and complain, so that the government can force the convenience store chain to pay reparations to those student workers. If this was Israel, they'd blame they exceeded their limit, deported them and blamed them for working too much and accepting less than minimum wage, resulting in no compensation paid out.

So no, you don't get to say the rest of the world do the same as Israel. To do so is FUD. Israel is one of a kind. I understand why Israel had always had a defensive posture and thinking. Lots of shit happened in the past. But today? Israel is strong, and it is doing too much to keep the Gazans down. What other country blows up 20000 houses and slaughtered hundreds of civilians in response to 2 terrorist deaths?

Can you even imagine New Zealand firing, an increasing number of rockets, every day? Sending their special units to kidnap and slaughter innocent children?

Just last week, four people were murdered in a restaurant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2016_Tel_Aviv_shooting). Can you imagine this Happening in Melbourne? Can you imagine a thing like this, sponsored by the New Zealand government who immediately declares the murderers as heroes and buys houses for their families?

There have been numerous incidents like this in the last couple of years and like before, since no one can live under terror attacks, a war will start. Like before, you will only hear about the retaliation, you will only see photos of destruction on the Palestinian side. You won't see how Hamas executes is own people for "collaborating" with Israel (or just because they don't like them), how it forces them to serve as human shields for its deadly rockets. You will criticize Israel out of understandable, but very misplaced sympathy.

You claiming his FUD claiming is FUD, is FUD.

It's all very simple, really. Israel is like the rest of the world and we're all just waiting for the world to realize the actual problem, which is:

--The crazy, murderous, religious fanatics who want rule the world (and kill all Jews, but I'm not sure anyone cares about this detail)--

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant#Statements_abou...)

(it's shocking we could not all just get along...)

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